


Ghost Family

by Miri1984



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Drabble Fic, F/M, Found Family, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-05 22:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4197456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabble fics in the Star Wars: Rebels universe. Usually tumblr prompts, but sometimes just one offs and one shots that come to mind. Set during the series, ongoing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes maintenance on the Ghost was a joy for Hera. Knowing how it all fit together, knowing that her hands were the ones that not only flew the ship true, but also looked after her when she was unwell. Sabine jokingly called her the ship’s mother, but Hera never corrected the young Mandalorian girl. Ghost was a part of the family and she rarely resented having to do the necessary maintenance she needed to run the way she needed.

Except when that maintenance required more hands than just Hera’s.

“Why am I doing this again?” Kanan had one hand stuck in a tangled mess of wiring -- the unfortunate product of a close shave with a swarm of TIEs near the ever increasing Imperial Blockade of Lothal.

“Because,” Hera said, pressed up against him in the cramped space between two bulkheads “you’re the only one I trust with steady enough hands.”

“Sabine’s good at this kind of stuff,” Kanan said.

“Sabine’s busy with the explosives for the recon mission, love,” Hera said, leaning forward a little. She needed to reach the control panel at the back of the mess of wires to shut it off, if she wasn’t careful she’d end up tripping a circuit and they’d all end up without gravity until the problem was fixed. Her right leg was cramping and Kanan was giving off a lot of nervous sweat, which didn’t smell bad, exactly (being in close quarters with Zeb was far, far worse) but did make her nostrils curl.

He was very, very… Kanan when he was this close to her.

Kanan sighed, but he did it without moving, which was why he was here in the first place. He had gentle hands, precise movements, an abundance of control over his body that Ezra and Sabine couldn’t manage.

A product of age, or his jedi training. Or something else that was quintessentially Kanan.

“Just a bit more,” Hera said. “Can you come closer here I’ve almost got it…”

Kanan shifted a bit at her direction, until he was pressed against her side even more thoroughly than he had been a moment ago. The warmth of his breath ghosted over her head even as she felt the beat of his heart through his shirt against her back.

Her hand slipped.

The spark wasn’t enough to do any damage, but it was enough to startle both of them into letting go of the wires. Gravity cut off immediately and the lights went dark as they floated, helplessly. “Dammit,” she swore, heartfelt, then bumped against the wall and careened back into Kanan.

He laughed, and caught her, turning her so she was facing him. “Hey, we’ll just have to get it the hard way,” he said, smiling at her even as she continued to curse her clumsiness.

She felt a finger on her chin, tilting her face up to him. His eyes were twinkling, his smile, infectious. She could still smell him and found that she missed the feel of his chest against her back -- missed feeling the steady beat of his heart.

His hand dropped away from her chin after a second and she looked away, her lekku brushing his cheek in zero gravity, the fuzz of his beard very odd, and very human against her skin.

“Can you…” she wiggled her fingers at him, then at the panel which was now hopelessly far away from them, and still buried under a mess of wires.

“If I knew what I was meant to do with it, sure,” he said easily. “You’re the expert here.”

She sighed in frustration, then keyed her comm. “Zeb we’ve managed to disrupt the gravity generator in here.”

“We know,” Zeb said. “Chopper just got a sensor full of soup.” She could hear the indignant squawking of the droid in the background, and suppressed a smile.

“Get him to turn on the auxillaries,” she said. “We need…”

“He’s already on it,” Sabine said. “Should be coming back on around…” Gravity returned with a rush and Hera hit the deck, hard, with Kanan on top of her. “...now.”

“A little warning, next time?” Kanan said shaking his head.

“Sorry,” Zeb said. “We figured you’d be okay.”

“Well we’re not _not_ okay,” Hera said after Kanan cut off the comms, smiling up at him. Colour came into Kanan’s cheeks and he swallowed. So different to the man she’d met back on Gorse, who would have taken this chance with both hands and leapt into it.

She’d never wanted to kiss that Kanan. Well. Not much. But right now, she kind of missed him.

He coughed and stood up, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. She took it, and probably imagined that he was a little reluctant to let it go once they were both steady.

“Shall we try again?” she said.

“Absolutely,” he answered.

 

 


	2. Only Peace

Avoiding Ezra was harder than Kanan thought it would be. The kid was stealthy and fast -- had to be considering his childhood -- but Kanan had been that kid once, and Kanan knew most of his tricks from personal experience. He was good at slipping into cracks, good at sensing when Ezra was near.

Sure, he had some natural advantages. Like actual Jedi training, like a better knowlege of the nooks and crannies of the Ghost, and like a burning, all consuming need not to come face to face with the fact that he’d promised to train Ezra to become a Jedi.

A few, tense days after they’d brought him on board, and Kanan knew that Hera, at least, had noticed him avoiding the kid. So now he started avoiding her as well. Soon enough he was going to have to avoid Chopper or melt into the bulkheads and become one with the metal of the ship.

Appealing, somehow. Ships didn’t have to train Jedi.

Sitting on the gangway in the cargo hold, cross legged, fists on his chin, in the relative quiet of the off shift, Kanan’s heart sped up with anxiety for the ten thousandth time since he’d discovered Ezra had passed the test of the holocron.

That had been Hera’s idea. Of course. Hera was all for Kanan taking up the mantle of a Jedi master, mentoring the kid through the most dangerous time in any Jedi’s training, with no other Jedi, no other younglings, no other help anywhere in a thousand light years close to being what Kanan needed.

 _Master Kenobi,_ he thought to himself. _I could really use you right now. And not just so I can ask you a million stupid questions._

There was no answer. He hadn’t expected one, even when he’d been fourteen and alone for the first time in his life.

That hadn’t stopped him from trying, then. Foolish, when there were hunters everywhere trying to finish what Order 66 had started, but sometimes being scared and alone was enough to drive you to desperate things.

He’d accepted a long time ago that there were no more Jedi. Now, he had a chance to turn that around, the only problem being that if he wanted the Jedi to come back, he was going to have to train them himself.

He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth against rising panic.

“Hey,” Hera sat next to him, letting her legs dangle over the gangway. “Thought I’d find you here.”

He did a quick check to make sure there wasn’t a shorter, dark haired figure behind her, then sighed and rested his head on the railing. “Hey,” he said wearily.

“You okay?”

“I’ve… been better,” Kanan said.

She squeezed his knee, not saying anything, just waiting. Not for the first time since coming onto the Ghost he found himself thinking of the Jedi code. How often he’d broken it. How badly he’d let himself drift away from what it truly meant to be Jedi.

How do you find your way back from that? How could he?

The pressure of her fingers, the warmth of her hand on his knee, the slight hitch in his breathing that wasn’t, for once, caused by the stress of the past few days promises, just by her proximity…

“You don’t know much about the Jedi code, do you Hera?” he said softly.

She shrugged. “I know a little,” she said. “Probably more than your average Twi’lek any way. My father fought with them after all.”

There was something else she wasn’t telling him, but Kanan was used to that, from Hera, just as she was probably used to it from him. They were comfortable with their secrets, even though Kanan’s had gotten fewer and fewer over the years, while Hera’s had stayed locked tight.

He didn’t mind. Her secrets weren’t just her own, after all, and betraying them meant betraying other people, and a cause that she cared about more than anything else.

Even him.

And there were some secrets he wasn’t willing to share with her, because they touched on them in ways he hadn't thought he’d ever have to worry about.

 _There is no passion,_ he thought bitterly, _there is serenity._

“How do I even begin to teach him?” he asked. “I wasn’t even a Jedi, Hera, let alone a Master. Do you have any idea of all the ways this is likely to go wrong?”

She leaned her head on his arm, squeezing his leg again. His heart, paradoxically, started to slow down, her presence and her touch bringing habitual calm, even in the face of a responsibility so huge that Kanan felt like it would crush him. “You’ll find a way,” she said. “You always do.”

He wasn’t so sure.


	3. Sleep

His bunk had never felt so comfortable before. The Ghost, he didn’t think, had been this peaceful since before Zeb joined the crew. He hadn’t actually slept since they’d taken him to Mustafar -- unless you counted passing out as sleeping, and Kanan had done that enough times to know that it never did.

And yet, he couldn’t sleep.

Hera had offered him meds from their new rebel friends but he’d turned them down -- he was used to aches and pains from overexertion. Torture, not so much, but the weariness that infected his limbs would normally be more than enough to send him over into sleep, no matter how the rest of him felt.

He changed position and smoothed out his breathing, reaching out to the force for a semblance of calm, but the force eluded him. The surety he’d felt, facing the Inquisitor on the gangway, had leaked away, and now he was just Kanan. Tired. Hurting.

He didn’t hear the door open. Possible that the Inquisitor had busted something loose in his ear drum. Maybe he needed a more thorough examination after all.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Hera said softly.

“Checking up on me?” he replied without turning his head.

“Yes,” she said simply, coming in and keying the door closed behind her. “I needed to see you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“You’re not okay.”

“If you thought I wasn’t okay what was the point in coming to check if I was okay?”

“Because I thought maybe I could help you… “

“... become okay?” he turned finally, looking up at her.

She sighed. There were shadows under her eyes and her skin had a greyish hue. Her lekku drooped low and she wasn’t wearing her flight suit, just the simple shift she usually slept in.

It wasn’t so long ago that he’d resigned himself to never seeing her again.

She was so beautiful.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, kneeling next to the bed. “I’m so sorry, Kanan.”

He frowned and reached out to take her hand. It was dry and cold without her gloves, resting small in his. “Hey,” he said, “what for?” She gave him a sad smile, as if she couldn’t believe he didn’t know, and he shuffled back, patting the mattress so she could sit next to him. “We’re all okay. We’ve even made some new friends.”

She turned her head away at that. New friends. Old friends, for her. Old friends she’d never told him about.

Old friends he’d not betrayed to the Empire, because she’d never told him about them.

He reached up, cupping her cheek and turning her back to him. “That’s what you’re sorry for, isn’t it?”

“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I tried to give you… some hope. Something to keep you going. But I couldn’t speak for Fulcrum, that decision had to be hers.”

_Ahsoka Tano._

“I never wanted you to tell me about them,” he said. “You know that. We agreed on it. And it turned out for the best -- if I’d known before they took me then..”

She shook her head, clenching her eyes shut. “Don’t…” she said.

“You know I would have talked,” he said. “It was the right decision Hera, you can’t…”

She put a finger on his lips, stopping him from going any further, then let her hand drop. “You didn’t know she was a Jedi.”

Kanan took a deep breath, wincing. Yep, the Inquisitor had gotten a good kick in there, right between the ribs. That was going to be black and blue in the morning. Hera noticed the wince and put her free hand on his bare chest. He closed his eyes, giving himself over to the feel of her touch.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. It didn’t.

“She could have helped you find your way.”

“She didn’t need to,” he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips, kissing it. “I had you.”

She smiled, then shuffled a bit so she was lying alongside him. “I missed you,” she said softly. “I’m glad you’re home.”

He breathed her in, cradling her gently, as though it had been her who’d been captured. She didn’t need him to protect her. That was part of why he loved her. But that didn’t stop her trying to protect _him_. “Me too,” he said, eyes drifting closed.

 _Now_ he could sleep.

 

 


	4. Anyone's Master

He didn’t know how late or early it was when he woke. Hera was sleeping soundly, arm wound tight around his waist, and the cabin air was cool on his skin. He extricated himself from her grasp as gently as possible, and she mumbled and rolled over, pulling blankets up to her ears. He smoothed them over her, reluctant, suddenly, to leave, but his stomach was reminding him how long it had been since he’d eaten and there was a tingling in his nerves -- the echoes of pain -- that he figured could do with a little dulling.

He padded barefoot to the kitchen, intending to warm through some of those noodle ration packs Sabine was constantly eating, maybe drink a cup of kaf (it would stop him sleeping, but he figured he’d slept enough).

A beer would definitely help, but they didn’t keep any alcohol on board. Not any more. And he wasn’t that person any longer. He hadn’t been for nearly six years.

He shut his eyes and rested his head against the cupboards while he waited for the ration pack to heat. The electric shocks had numbed him to the force, or maybe he was just too tired, because he didn’t realise someone else was in the room until the warmer beeped and he opened his eyes.

“Hello, Kanan Jarrus,” Ahsoka Tano stood in the doorway. Kanan’s heart sped up and he fumbled with his ration pack, nearly burning his fingers as the steam rose out from under the seal.

“Fulcrum,” he said.

She gave him a small, sad smile. “Ahsoka,” she reminded him, gently, before slipping in behind him and fetching the things to make kaf.

She knew her way around the Ghost’s kitchen.

Kanan tried very hard to push the surge of resentment in his gut down and away.

His noodles were going to go cold at this rate, and his stomach growled at him again, so he shrugged and sat, spooning in a mouthful and chewing while Ahsoka worked. She set out two cups. “Sweetener?” she asked.

“Two please,” he said, a little surprised that she didn’t know that the way she knew everything else. She finished brewing, and passed him a cup, sitting across from him.

“You probably have questions.”

He put another forkful of noodles in his mouth and chewed at her.

Her eyes narrowed and he thought he saw her lips twitch.

“About the order.”

He took another mouthful, probably a bit before he should have, and had to work to swallow it down.

Her lips definitely twitched this time.

Kanan put down his fork and sighed. “I don’t, actually.”

“Hera wanted to tell you,” she said. “About me. But we agreed that it wasn’t…”

“We agreed?”

“I wanted to make sure at least one of us would be able to carry on. To fulfil Master Kenobi’s directive. If you were captured…”

“I was captured.”

Ahsoka gave an impatient sigh and Kanan tried not to feel triumphant about that. She wasn’t quite as calm and unruffled as she’d seemed at first.

“When you first joined Hera,” Ahsoka said, slowly and patiently, as if she were talking to a child, “we weren’t entirely certain who you were.”

“Hera didn’t know.”

“No. And when she found out she didn’t tell us.”

Kanan tilted his head. He hadn’t known that. Hadn’t known that a night trapped in a cave in the highlands of a moon in crisis, huddling around a fire in the cold repeating memories to each other that neither of them would ever speak again had remained, for a time, something only the two of them shared.

He clung to that for a moment, like a raft in choppy seas. She didn’t tell them.

“We searched the records,” Ahsoka continued. “There weren’t many apprentices and padawans that survived and were unaccounted for. It wasn’t too difficult to find your name in the end, Caleb Dume.”

He pushed back from the bench, shaking his head. “That’s not my name,” he said. Ahsoka leaned forward, but he pulled back even further. “Caleb Dume died with the order. And yes, actually, I do have questions, Ahsoka _Tano.”_

“I’m here to answer them, Kanan,” she said.

He felt his lip curl in a sneer. “When they expelled you did you turn to the dark side? Is that why the Clones didn’t turn on you? Are you playing with us before you hand us over to your emperor? What happened to General Skywalker, to Master Kenobi, where is he? _What happened to the younglings in the temple and why weren’t you there to stop it?”_

She stood as swiftly as he had, eyes flashing. “You…” she started, then stopped, shutting her eyes and breathing deeply. Jedi techniques. Techniques that he should be using to calm the raging fire he was feeling in his own belly, but he had so much anger, so much resentment… he could still feel the throb of shocks through his body, still hear the Inquisitor’s voice…

_What would they do, your loyal followers, if they knew their leader was a coward?_

“Kanan?”

Ezra?  
His padawan’s hand on his arm closed a connection between them, and he could feel all of Ezra’s worry and affection washing over him like a river. “Why are you up?” Kanan said, trying, and nearly succeeding, to keep the anger out of his voice.

“You were shouting,” Ezra said. Kanan looked up at Ahsoka, whose eyes were sympathetic. Pitying.

Push the anger _down,_ Caleb.

_Kanan. My name is Kanan._

“I’m sorry Ezra,” he said.

Ezra shook his head. “Hey, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” Kanan said, and reached out to ruffle Ezra’s hair. The boy grinned, blushing, and shook off his hand.

“Good,” he said. “Then I’m going back to bed.”

Ezra left, and Kanan turned back to see Ahsoka watching him, arms folded. Her anger had dissipated completely. Compartmentalised away like every Jedi master he’d ever encountered. By comparison he felt Ezra’s age again. Full of questions, overflowing with emotions. Utterly unsuited to be anyone’s master.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

“You have every right to be angry,” Ahsoka said softly.

“But I can’t afford to be, can I?” he asked bitterly, picking up his noodle cup and tossing it in the compactor. “None of us ever could.”

She didn’t have an answer to that.

Neither did he.


	5. In the Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prize fic for the 100 followers celebration of the askkananjarrus blog.

It’s in the air between them. Unspoken, but present, detectable to everyone on the Ghost, even those without the force.

Sabine sees it when they pass each other in the corridor. Kanan’s hand brushes against Hera’s suit, an acknowledgement of the space between them, without words, just a simple touch. Hera’s head leans slightly towards his hand, the end of her lek trailing against the soft fabric of Kanan’s shirt. They do not look at each other as they pass. They do not need to.

Zeb sees it in the stance they take, fighting stormtroopers on Corellia, on Lothal, on Nar Shadaa. Kanan braced, legs apart, never far enough away from her that his lightsaber - were he to light it - would not be able to sweep blaster fire away were she exposed. She, crouched in cover, picking off enemies that push him too close to revealing his true nature. She makes sure of exits, protects him by planning for contingencies he does not.

Ezra sees it in memories, half buried in places he is afraid to look, places where he plays with toys on the floor in front of parents who worry about his wellbeing, whether he is doing well in school, how tall he is getting. Parents who worry that the world he is born into isn’t good enough for their son, but if they don’t do something about it, who will. They fight to make things better, for him, for the future they want him to have. They fight for that together, even though they live on the edge of a knife, on the brink of loss.

Ezra sees it when they don’t think he notices, a shared look, when they’re worried about him, a low voiced entreaty _“Ezra needs some time alone right now,”_ a gentle reassurance _“It’s not you Kanan doesn’t trust, Ezra, it’s himself.”_

He sees it when they finish each others sentences when they unknowingly step in front of threats to each other, and to him. He feels it in the pit of his stomach when he comes back to them after a mission, and knows that this… this is _home._

Kanan feels it all the time, like the force, but under his skin, prickling like heat when she is near, orienting him when she is not. Like Ezra, she represents home, a centre to his universe that will not turn on him, will not tell him to run. 

Hera feels it when he kisses her, when he cups the back of her head in hands so gentle and warm that she can almost believe she is feeling the rays of Ryloth’s sun. She feels it when he sleeps next to her, arms wound tight, but gentle, around her middle, afraid to let her go, in the depths of dreams of times when he had nothing to hold onto at all.

It permeates the walls and bulkheads of the Ghost until the ship itself hums with it, until none of them can imagine what life could be without it. 

None of them would ever wish to.


	6. Only Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prize fic for myrandomramblings on tumblr, who was a winner in the 100 followers celebration of the askkananjarrus blog :D.

Nights on the Ghost were dark and quiet. Sabine would retire to her quarters shortly after they ate, muttering about sketching new designs or working on a formula for better explosives. Zeb and Ezra would squabble about whose turn it was to clean the dinner dishes, while Hera and Kanan poured over star charts and strategies for their next job. Usually they didn’t notice when Ezra slipped out to bed and Zeb settled in front of the holonet or down to the cargo bay to do his nightly exercises. 

“We should give him a bedtime,” Kanan had said at first. “Isn’t that… what you’re supposed to do? For children.”

“He’s old enough to work that out for himself,” Hera had said. “You can give him a schedule if you want, but really, do you think he’s going to follow it? Once he falls asleep in the cockpit because he stayed up all night he’ll get the message that he can’t afford to stint himself on food and rest.”

“I don’t know what to do with kids.”

Hera knows him better than he knows himself. Knows what he needs, always did know. He wonders, sometimes, how he ever survived without her. “He’s human, dear,” she tells him. “Just treat him the way you would have liked to be treated.”

_How you would have liked to be treated._

Kanan remembers that one of the greatest kindnesses of his life was being allowed to sleep, uninterrupted, for longer than an hour, without fear of being discovered. 

He has no idea, truly, how he would have liked to be treated. There is no frame of reference. 

Kanan doesn’t give Ezra a schedule.

Tonight, Hera leans down over his work and kisses his cheek, saying she’s going to turn in early while he still studies the layouts of the Imperial shipyard, searching for ways to get inside undetected, applying the tactical mind and knowledge that she recruited him for. He murmurs an endearment in response, not looking up. He needs to finish this, and he knows she will be there in the morning. _How you would have liked to be treated,_ indeed.

An hour later, maybe two, and he hears a noise from down the hallway.

Zeb, going to sleep finally, he thinks, although the Lasat tends to be the last awake even when Kanan is working like he is tonight. A high pitched whimper, however, is definitely _not_ the Lasat, and a quick glance at the surveillance comm shows Zeb in the midst of his staff forms amongst the cargo crates in the hold.

The sound is coming from the quarters that Zeb shares with Ezra, though.

Kanan hesitates, considers reaching out through the force to be sure his apprentice is all right, then changes his mind and stands up, flicking off the holo display and padding silently towards the boy’s room.

Ezra is on the top bunk, of course, not only because of Chopper’s propensity for pranks. Kanan can remember Ezra’s tower on Lothal, knows that the boy prefers to be up as high as he can be. The habits of the hunted, habits he had to form himself when he was Ezra’s age — Ezra has known them for nearly seven years. 

“Ezra?” Kanan is familiar with bad dreams, knows how sometimes coming out of them is a gradual process. Ezra can hear him, but he is still trapped in whatever world his brain has created for him in sleep, and Kanan needs to ease him back into this one. “Ezra are you okay?”

A low groan then, heartfelt and heartbreaking, before a pair of blue eyes peer over the side of the bunk, blinking in the dim light from the corridor beyond.

“Kanan?”

“Hey, kid. You were having a bad dream.”

“I was?”

“You okay?”

Ezra’s eyes fill so suddenly that Kanan is embarrassed. He remembers this. Remembers the rush of impossible feeling, when someone, anyone, shows concern. Sympathy can hurt worse than a blaster bolt, when you’ve been so long starved of it. 

The boy ducks back into the bunk, voice choked with tears he is too ashamed to shed. “I’m fine,” he says. 

Kanan can do one of two things. He can leave, and let Ezra keep his pride, or he can try to break through. “No you’re not,” he says, not even aware that he’s made the latter decision. In his head, a child too young for war is watching his master die in front of him, is trying to force legs made of lead run for the life she died for, is screaming because these things are not fair, never fair, what _could have been_ crowding out _what is_ to the point where the noise is enough to kill all action.

There is silence for a while. “If I’m not, then I can’t be a Jedi, can I,” Ezra says eventually, voice small.

“What makes you think that?” Kanan says.

“That thing you say — whenever you meditate. There is no emotion. There is only peace. I can’t do that.”

Ezra still has not shown his face and Kanan won’t ask him to. He knows, as long as Ezra speaks to the wall, he can pretend that he is not exposing his heart.

“You can’t do that yet,” Kanan says softly. “Sometimes neither can I.”

There is a long silence. Kanan has explained this to Ezra, too many times. He knows, though, that his own mantra is false, that there is a point where you can only try, and there is no _do._

“I miss them,” Ezra says. 

Kanan reaches up, finding a small hand in the darkness. “I know, kid,” he says. “But we’re here.”

It’s a while before Ezra stops crying, but eventually, he turns over and his breath eases into sleep.


End file.
